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In the media: ENV's Sarah Burch on Ontario's plan to double ethanol in gas

Tuesday, December 5, 2017

Residents in Kitchener-Waterloo are both hopeful and skeptical of the province's plans to double the minimum amount of ethanol in gasoline by 2020.

"This is an interesting and promising short-term strategy," said Sarah Burch, an associate professor in the department of geography and environmental management at the University of Waterloo.

"In Ontario, a third of our greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation so it is absolutely crucial that we develop not just one, but many policies to reduce those emissions," she said.

However, Burch also said the plan doesn't address the "fundamental challenges" of climate change.

"Increasing the amount of ethanol in gasoline actually addresses none of those underlying, deep drivers of transportation emissions," Burch said. "We need to get people out of cars that have internal combustion engines and into mass public transit or electric vehicles."